While Bush is President Things Can Only Get WorseSeeing the Forest - Redwood City,CA,USAThe Iraq War seems to be spinning out of control -- a regional war involving Iran, Saudi Arabia, and maybe Turkey and Syria is now a very real possibility. ...See all stories on this topic
Iraqi Shiite with Iran ties to visit BushIranMania News - Iran... Exile in Iran: In 1982, during Saddam Hussein's regime and its war with Iran, the SCIRI was founded in Iran as a guerilla movement, said the Council on Foreign ...See all stories on this topic
The New DemagoguesWashington Post - United States... It is no coincidence that Ahmadinejad is a veteran of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran and the war between Iran and Iraq. In ...See all stories on this topic

Ilan Pappé on Israel's crisis after the Lebanon warSocialistworker.co.uk - London,UK... He was appointed a minister of strategy with a particular stress on preparing Israel for the next war against Iran. Lieberman is a Russian Jew. ...
Three Countries Foresee War in Iran, North KoreaAngus Reid Global Scan - Vancouver,BC,CanadaIn Israel and Canada, 60 per cent and 57 per cent of respondents believe the US will ultimately be at war against either Iran or North Korea. ...
Armagideon Time: Bush's Nuclear Folly and the National Security ...Empire Burlesque - Oxford,Oxfordshire,UK... Bush has heaped monetary and military rewards on India and Pakistan for their illegally developed nuclear arsenals, while threatening war on Iran for what has ...

Armagideon Time: Bush's Nuclear Folly and the National Security ...Empire Burlesque - Oxford,Oxfordshire,UK... Bush has heaped monetary and military rewards on India and Pakistan for their illegally developed nuclear arsenals, while threatening war on Iran for what has ...See all stories on this topic
Three Countries Foresee War in Iran, North KoreaAngus Reid Global Scan - Vancouver,BC,CanadaIn Israel and Canada, 60 per cent and 57 per cent of respondents believe the US will ultimately be at war against either Iran or North Korea. ...
Ilan Pappé on Israel's crisis after the Lebanon warSocialistworker.co.uk - London,UK... He was appointed a minister of strategy with a particular stress on preparing Israel for the next war against Iran. Lieberman is a Russian Jew. ...

Outside View: Iraq disaster warningMonsters and Critics.com - Glasgow,UK... Many of the consequences of a war with Iran are easy to imagine. Oil ... encirclement. That is precisely the danger if we go to war with Iran. ...See all stories on this topic
The roads from SuezGuardian Unlimited - UK... reaction to what they took be an ominous turn against them in the region was to take the form of assistance to the Iraqis in their war against Iran from 1984 ...See all stories on this topic
Moves toward War with Iran: How to Prevent War ... Part 4History News Network - Seattle,WA,USA... In previous articles I have set out why I think an America attack on Iran is likely, how such an attack would be carried out and what would happen as a result. ...
Historic opportunity lost with Saddam verdict?MehrNews.com - Tehran,Iran... Although 18 years have passed since the end of the Baathist regime’s war against Iran , there are many Iranians and Iraqi Kurds who are still suffering from ...

Iran's "Power of Deterrence"Center for Research on Globalization, Canada - 10 hours agoby Michel Chossudovsky. On November 2, Iran tested three new types of land-to-sea and sea-to-sea missiles in the context of its "Great ...
Are Israelis gearing up to bomb Iran?Center for Research on Globalization, Canada - Nov 3, 2006by Robert Fox. With the US Navy involved in massive "war games" only twenty miles off the coast of Iran in what many international ...

Another war veteran succumbs to chemical weapons injuriesMehrNews.com - Tehran,Iran... companies, particularly those from Germany, supplied Iraq with materials necessary for production of chemical weapons in its 1980-1988 war against Iran.
Iran Strongly Opposes WMDsFars News Agency - Tehran,IranHe said his country is still suffering from the aftermath of the chemical invasions by the Iraqi army during Saddam's imposed war on Iran. ...See all stories on this topic
Islam is a Religion of Peace. What?Persian Journal - Iran... mingled and living as neighbor". Bakr decided to united different Arab tribes by waging holy war against Iran. Bakr did not see the ...

Israeli maniacs make fun on iran.

Outside View: Cakewalks and walks in the park?Monsters and Critics.com - Glasgow,UK... who acts as spokesman for Iran`s suppressed democratic forces, says, 'The first step is to embrace the unpleasant fact that we are at war with Iran, and it is ...See all stories on this topic
Crossfire War - Preface to Book on World War III Chronicle - 1994 ...NewsBlaze - Folsom,CA,USA... Bible. This war against Iran is discussed in two chapters of the book of Daniel 8 and 11, in the last part of both chapters. The ...
The Clock’s Ticking: Stopping Iran Before It’s Too LateArms Control Today - USA... Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, used the Hezbollah attacks—what he calls “ Iran’s Proxy War”—to push the United States into war with Iran: ...

Iran Military

Lebanon FM denies UN reports

Foreign Minister Fawzi Salloukh denied U.N. reports that arms smuggled from Syria have been intercepted and seized since Resolution 1701 went into effect.
Salloukh told reporters Wednesday that no arms or ammunitions were intercepted either on land or in the sea since the Lebanese army was deployed on the country's border with Syria on August 17.
He said the border crossings with Syria are " www.blogger.com http:>Salloukh was obviously retorting to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan's report on the implementation of 1701, in which he said that arms shipments from Syria have been intercepted.
He also denied that Hezbollah was undermining the government's control and authority in the border areas with Israel as mentioned in Annan's report.
"The truth is that Hezbollah does not limit the authority of the government or the Lebanese army which has been deployed along the Blue Line with Israel," Salloukh said.
"No violation or obstruction or armed manifestation of any kind was made by Hezbollah members," he added.
In another development, a Lebanese civilian was injured Wednesday by an Israeli bomb explosion in south Lebanon.
A security source said a 14-year-old boy suffered serious injuries by the explosion of a cluster bomb, one of hundreds dropped by Israel in the region during its war on Lebanon last July and August.
The latest casualty brought up to 111 the number of people injured by Israeli cluster bombs in addition to 23 dead.



Lebanon FM denies UN reports

Foreign Minister Fawzi Salloukh denied U.N. reports that arms smuggled from Syria have been intercepted and seized since Resolution 1701 went into effect.
Salloukh told reporters Wednesday that no arms or ammunitions were intercepted either on land or in the sea since the Lebanese army was deployed on the country's border with Syria on August 17.
He said the border crossings with Syria are " www.blogger.com http:>

My Exit Strategy
By Rez Dog
Iraq war supporters constantly challenge critics to offer solutions to BushCheney’s fiasco in that unfortunate country. Not that most of these apologists are interested in any new ideas or thoughtful discussion; they simply want a ...
MOCKINGBIRD'S MEDLEY - http://mimuspauly.blogspot.com

Let's bomb Iran.

Iran army video

Iran missiles power

war in iran

Coming War Iran (among others...)
By fungua mlango
Ellsberg's open call for insider disclosure of Iran Plans: The Next War (Harpers.org): "A hidden crisis is under way. Many government insiders are aware of serious plans for war with Iran, but Congress and the public remain largely in ...
Repository - http://repositagain.blogspot.com

war in iran
The time to stop a war with Iran is NOW
Political Affairs Magazine - New York,NY,USA
... Please go to www.peaceaction.org and sign the "No War with Iran!" petition today! This petition is directed to Secretary of State ...

Ring the alarms

was a moment that Israel's left and right had both been waiting for. The ascent of Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel is our home) party into the corridors of power was the cue for pantomime cries of "victory", "sell out", "business as usual" and "fascism" to bloom across the country's political desert.

While the "sell out" shrieks from Lieberman's far-right bedfellows were feebly predictable, the "fascism" alarm call from veteran peace activist Uri Avnery was a more serious matter. It may circulate around the left for as long as his last such heads-up about Gush Emunim before disengagement, or the one a few months later about Israeli army officers after Lebanon. Indeed, Azmi Bishara, the leader of the Balad party, has already taken up the call.

The authoritarianism and racism of Lieberman's party, especially its tub-thumping rhetoric of "transfer", a euphemism for the ethnic cleansing of Arabs from Israel, is certainly frightening. But within Israel, there is nothing unprecedented about this platform.

In 1948 David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, presided over the expulsion of more than 750,000 Palestinians (during what Israelis call the war of independence and Palestinians know as the naqba). The country could not have been created in its current form without their enforced flight and the land seizures that followed. For this reason, denial of a Palestinian's right of return is still seen as a litmus test in mainstream Israeli politics.

The most worrying thing about Lieberman is not that his ideas exist on a plane outside Israel's political continuum but that, in many ways, they are close to its dead centre. The proposal to transfer "the triangle", an area around Um al-Fahm where 250,000 Palestinian citizens of Israel currently live, was first brought into the press spotlight at the end of 2000 at Israel's most prestigious annual policy-making forum, the Herzliya conference.

The then prime minister Ariel Sharon publicly floated the idea again in February 2004. Opposition from Washington to a de facto violation of international law reportedly took the plan out of the headlines, but it remained in the comment pages.

In December 2005, Uzi Arad, a former Mossad director, government foreign policy adviser and current head of the Institute for Policy and Strategy, which organises the Herzliya conference, resurrected the idea in an article for New Republic.

In June of this year, during his last visit to London, the current PM Ehud Olmert went further. He said that Europeans knew from historical memory that "territories were exchanged, that populations even moved sometimes, that territorial adjustments were made in order to create better circumstances for a peaceful solution".

He added: "In one format or another, in one manner or another, at the end of the day, we will have to find ways to do it here."

So why all the fuss about Lieberman's "victory"? An editorial in the Ha'aretz newspaper yesterday gave a hint with its warning that Lieberman's "lack of restraint and his unbridled tongue, comparable only to those of Iran's president, are liable to bring disaster down upon the entire region".

Lieberman, who has previously threatened to bomb Tehran, the Aswan Dam, and (less impressively) Beirut, has been awarded the new portfolio of minister for strategic threats. In Israeli politics, this translates as "the minister for planning war with Iran", or possibly Gaza. But while his appointment is evidently a desperate move to try to ensure Olmert's political survival, it can also be interpreted as crass diplomacy or even a preparation for war.

Still, no one is proposing that Lieberman is going to bend the Knesset, Washington and the UN to his will just so he can go bananas in Persia. If a decision is taken to bomb Iran, at this stage, he looks more likely to be a second tier fall guy than a mover and shaker.

As a Russian immigrant settler who admires President Putin and the Chinese People's Liberation Army with equal ardour, Lieberman is an outsider among Israel's political elite. And he probably won't make it onto the AIPAC snack circuit either.

His support base among Israel's million or so Russian-speakers - about 20% of the country's population - reflects the particular insecurities of that community and the process of assimilating new Jewish immigrants.

While people of Russian descent in Israel often view themselves as over-achievers from the land of Chekhov and Dostoevsky, popular stereotypes depict them as aggressive drunks, primitive in their outlook, and probably not even Jewish. Indeed, as many as half of the country's Russian speakers are not Jewish in the sense of having being born to a Jewish mother or converted to Judaism. Because of this, they cannot get married in the country.

In the old Soviet Union, Russian Jews were noted scientists, doctors and musicians but as "olim hadashim" (new immigrants), they have frequently been forced into low-paid and unskilled jobs, often as security guards. Lieberman appeals to them as a man cut from the same cloth. In the Soviet Union, he had worked as a broadcaster but after emigrating to Israel, his first job was as a bouncer at a disco.

A straight-talker, unlike most politicians, when he promises to support the introduction of civil marriages and introduce greater economic help for new immigrants, he is believed. When he promises not to compromise with the Arabs, it resonates among a population whose own stake in Israeli society feels precarious at best.

Again, there is nothing unique about this. Successive waves of migrants to Israel have been required to prove their Israeliness through racism and violence. Holocaust survivors became renowned in 1948 as the most merciless of warriors; Mizrahi (or Arab) Jews as the most fearful of anti-Arab racists. The meek Orthodox religious establishment won their spurs as gun-toting hilltop bigots, and today Russians and Ethiopians are following the same trajectory.

So is the rise of Lieberman, as others on this site have argued, just a case of Israeli business as usual then? Well, not exactly.

Israeli racism may be founded on denial of the naqba but since the "war on terror" began, its freedom to act on that denial has been enhanced by the suspension of external checks and balances on its behaviour. Now, when Israel kills civilians on a beach in Gaza, international sanctions are levied against its victims. When it commits war crimes in Lebanon the US rushes through emergency military aid.

In such a climate, it sometimes feels as if there's no limit to how far rightwing reaction in the country can spread. Avnery and Bishara are right to sound an alarm.

Anti-Arab racism, for example, is currently approaching epidemic levels. Earlier this year, an opinion poll found that more than two-thirds of Israeli Jews would refuse to live in the same building as an Arab and half would not allow an Arab in their home. Among those surveyed 41% wanted entertainment facilities to be segregated, 18% said that they felt hatred when they heard Arabic spoken and 40% thought Israel should "support the emigration of Arab citizens".

The irresistible rise of Avigdor Lieberman, now the second most popular prime ministerial candidate in Israel, is not so much making racism respectable as demonstrating what happens after the fact. If it helps liberals in the outside world to wake up to what is happening in this blighted land, Lieberman will have done a favour to Palestinians, the international community - and Israeli Jews.

On the other hand, if the mixture of authoritarianism and street racism that he champions is allowed to run riot within Israeli society, the results for the region could be more convulsive than many expect, whether they involve brown-shirted Russians marching through Jaffa or not.

Israel's War With Iran

The recent fighting in Lebanon may have looked to some like old news, just another battle in the long-running Arab-Israeli war. But it also represented something much more disturbing: the start of a new war between Israel and Iran.

The Israeli defense establishment, which regards Hezbollah as a frontal commando unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, certainly saw things this way. The Iranians may not have been physically present on the frontlines in Lebanon, but they were active there nonetheless. A number of Revolutionary Guard members were killed in the Israeli incursion into the town of Baalbek (close to the Syrian border) on August 1, and Israeli intelligence claims that Iranians helped Hezbollah fire the land-to-sea missile that almost destroyed an Israeli warship in mid-July. Most of Hezbollah's arms -- including modern antitank weapons and the thousands of rockets that rained down on Israel -- came from Iran (as well as Syria). Iranian advisers had spent years helping Hezbollah train and build fortified positions throughout southern Lebanon.

Iran, in fact, has been heading steadily toward a confrontation with Israel for some time now, and its aid to Hezbollah was meant to ensure that it would have a ready strategic response if Israel took action against it. From Israel's perspective, it is lucky that the war broke out when it did. Things would have been quite different if Hezbollah's patron had already been armed with nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them. From Iran's perspective, accordingly, the conflict started too soon. Contrary to conventional wisdom, Tehran did not give Hezbollah's leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, permission to launch a major operation against Israel on July 12. Hezbollah's strike -- which resulted in the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers and the killing of several others -- was supposed to be relatively minor, just one more in a long series of provocations across Israel's northern border. Nasrallah seems not to have expected the powerful Israeli response that followed, and he quickly proposed an immediate cease-fire and a prisoner exchange.

In the aftermath of the conflict, several questions need to be asked. Why did Israel not strike even sooner, as soon as it determined that Hezbollah was building a vast stockpile of rockets that could threaten Israeli population centers? What motivated Israel's government to strike back when it did and with such force? Why did Israel turn the kidnapping, however serious on a tactical level, into a full-scale strategic war against Hezbollah and Lebanon? And what, finally, does the aftermath of the war mean for Israel's looming showdown with Iran?

PROVOCATION

Hezbollah's stockpiling of rockets in southern Lebanon began shortly after Israel's withdrawal from the country in May 2000. From the start, Israel's then prime minister, Ehud Barak, knew exactly what was going on. But a violent new Palestinian intifada had broken out that same year and was occupying much of Israel's attention. It never even occurred to Barak to launch another large-scale military campaign in Lebanon so soon after Israel's pullout.

When Ariel Sharon succeeded ...

Defusing the Iran Crisis

Reports that Iran and Russia have reached an agreement on a plan for the joint enrichment of Iran's uranium in Russia have eased fears of a major international confrontation over Iran's nuclear plans. But this danger has by no means been eliminated. Without a permanent resolution of the dispute agreeable to both the United States and Iran, the prospect of an armed clash will grow increasingly severe. Such a clash might not entail full-scale war, but it could trigger an uncontrollable explosion of sectarian and religious strife throughout the Middle East. Preventing such a clash is among the most pressing tasks facing the international community today.

At heart this dispute revolves around Iranian efforts to enrich natural uranium (i.e., increase its content of fissionable U-235) in its own facilities--either for use as a fuel in civilian power plants, as claimed by Tehran, or as the core of nuclear bombs, as claimed by Washington. Enrichment activities of this sort aren't prohibited by the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which Iran signed in 1968, but would constitute a breach if the highly enriched uranium was used for military purposes.

Dubai ports takeover linked to Iran attack?

Is the Bush administration's recent deal to allow the Dubai government effectively to take over control of container and stevedore operations in 22 U.S. ports part of a secret plan to launch a military strike on Iran?

Maybe the Dubai Ports World, or DPW, deal is the quid pro quo, the pay-off, for Dubai allowing us to use military facilities in the United Arab Emirates as staging points for a planned Iran attack?
Maybe the Bush administration is turning a blind eye to the extensive flight of capital and people from Iran to Iraq because the U.S. wants to protect those Iranians who can flee to Dubai (as well as the capital they bring with them) before a "shock and awe" military attack on Iran takes out the Ahmadinejad regime and all the mullahs who stay home with him? Strangely, the pieces begin to add up to these conclusions.

We have amply document that Dubai has been a welcome home for the capital flight from Iran as the mullahs and their cronies seek to find a safe haven for the billions they have stolen from the Iranian people. Dubai calculates that by the end of 2006, some $300 billion will have been moved from Iran to Dubai by over 400,000 Iranians. Over 7,000 Iranian companies operate in Dubai, and some 300,000 to 400,000 wealthy Iranians make Dubai their home some or all of the year. Billionaire former President Akbar Hashami Rafsanjani owns vacation resorts on Dubai's world-class beaches.

Meanwhile, Iran announced last week that 10 centrifuges have now gone operational at their uranium enrichment plant at Natanz. In meetings with leaders of Hamas, Iran agreed to fund the terrorist organization, making up the shortfall caused by the decision of the United States and Israel to withhold funds. Yet, in meetings with officials of the United Arab Emirates this week, there is no suggestion that Secretary Rice insisted that the UAE could face sanctions for continuing to support Iran.

Under pressure over the DPW deal, President Bush decided to emphasize how important the UAE was to the United States military, allowing us to us UAE military bases and ports for our troops, Air Force, and Navy warships, as well as for American military personnel on R&R from Iraq or Afghanistan. Suddenly we're told that Dubai has "turned around," reversing the previous open door policy to al-Qaida operatives and their money.

Maybe the secret agenda is that the United States needs the UAE bases to attack Iran successfully.
As a payoff for allowing the U.S. to use the UAE as a staging point in the Iran attack, the Bush administration agrees to push the DPW deal through in a "hush-hush" manner. Next, the government of Dubai raises $7 billion in government-guaranteed international debt so DPW, the government of Dubai's front company, does not have to use any equity capital to make the purchase. Then Dubai makes decades of huge profits by operating the container and stevedore activities in 22 East Coast and Gulf ports.

To allow Dubai to make money from all sides, the U.S. will allow UAE to function as an escape hatch for as many of the mullahs and their cronies that can get out of Iran before the war starts. Maybe it is all a "wink-wink" game where Dubai is involved, as long as we get to use Dubai bases in the planned attack on Iran.

No wonder Dubai is one of the wealthiest Arab states in the Middle East. As we "follow the money" on the DPW deal, how much more of America does the Bush administration plan to sell to our friends in Dubai?

Churchill, Hitler and Newt
PAT BUCHANAN
CREATORS SYNDICATE
You can always tell when the War Party wants a new war. They will invariably trot out the Argumentum ad Hitlerum.

Before the 1991 Gulf War, Saddam had become "the Hitler of Arabia," though he had only conquered a sandbox half the size of Denmark. Milosevic then became the "Hitler of the Balkans," though he had lost Slovenia, Croatia and Macedonia, was struggling to hold Bosnia and Kosovo, and had defeated no one.

Comes now the new Hitler.
"This is 1935, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is as close to Adolf Hitler as we've seen," said Newt Gingrich to a startled editor at Human Events.

"We now know who they are - the question is who are we. Are we Baldwin or Churchill?"

"In 1935 . . . Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini intimidated the democracies," Newt plunged ahead. "The question is who is going to intimidate who." Yes, a little learning can be a dangerous thing.

A few facts. First, when Hitler violated the Versailles Treaty by announcing rearmament in March 1935, Baldwin was not in power. Second, Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald quickly met with Il Duce to form the Stresa Front - against Hitler. Third, when Mussolini invaded Abyssinia in October 1935, Baldwin imposed sanctions.

But Churchill did not wholly approve.
Abyssinia, said Churchill, is a "wild land of tyranny, slavery and tribal war. . . . No one can keep up the pretense that Abyssinia is a fit, worthy and equal member of a league of civilized nations."

As late as 1938, Churchill was still proclaiming the greatness of Il Duce: "It would be a dangerous folly for the British people to underrate the enduring position in world history which Mussolini will hold; or the amazing qualities of courage, comprehension, self-control and perseverance which he exemplifies."

But back to the new Hitler.
The Iranians, said Newt, "have been proactively at war with us since 1979." We must now prepare to invade and occupy Iran, and identify a "network of Iranians prepared to run their . . . country" after we take the place over.

"I wake up every morning thinking we could lose two major cities today and have the equivalent of the second Holocaust by nuclear weapons - this morning."

What about diplomacy?
"We should say to the Europeans that there is no diplomatic solution that is imaginable that is going to solve this problem." Newt's reasoning: War is inevitable - the longer we wait, the graver the risk. Let's get it over with. Bismarck called this committing suicide out of fear of death.

My own sense of this astonishing interview is that Newt is trying to get to the right of John McCain on Iran and cast himself - drum roll, please - as the Churchill of our generation.

But are the comparisons of Ahmadinejad with Hitler and Iran with the Third Reich, let alone Newt with Churchill, instructive? Or are they ludicrous? Again, a few facts.

In 1942, Hitler's armies dominated Europe from the Pyrenees to the Urals. Ahmadinejad is the president of a nation whose air and naval forces would be toasted in hours by the United States. Iran has missiles that can hit Israel, but no nuclear warheads. Israel could put scores of atom bombs on Iran. The United States, without losing a plane, could make the country uninhabitable with one B-2 flyover and a few MX and Trident missiles.

Why would Ayatollah Khameinei, who has far more power than Ahmadinejad, permit him to ignite a war that could mean the end of their revolution and country? And if we were not intimidated by a USSR with thousands of nuclear warheads targeted on us, why should Ahmadinejad cause Newt to break out in cold sweats at night?

Currently, the "nuclear program" of Iran consists of trying to run uranium hexafluoride gas through a few centrifuges. There is no hard evidence Iran is within three years of producing enough highly enriched uranium for one bomb.

And if Iran has been at war with us since 1979, why has it done so much less damage than Khadafi, who blew up that discotheque in Berlin with our soldiers inside and massacred those American kids on Pan Am 103? Diplomacy worked with Khadafi. Why not try it with Iran?

Yet, Newt and the War Party appear to be pushing against an open door. A Fox News poll finds Iran has replaced North Korea as the nation Americans believe is our greatest immediate danger. And a Washington Post polls finds 56 percent of Americans backing military action to ensure Iran does not acquire a nuclear weapon.

Instead of whining about how they were misled into Iraq, why don't Democrats try to stop this new war before it starts? They can begin by introducing a resolution in Congress denying Bush authority to launch any preventive war on Iran, unless Congress first declares war on Iran.

Isn't that what the Constitution says?
Before we go to war, let's have a debate of whether we need to go to war.

__________
Pat Buchanan, founder and editor of The American Conservative magazine, is a columnist for Creators Syndicate.

What Putin Hopes to Gain from Iran

Monday's news that Iran has postponed Moscow talks, scheduled to start Thursday, on having its uranium enriched in Russia, and has instead resumed its own enrichment activities, was hardly stunning — except, perhaps, to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Putin had expected a cash windfall from Iran for the Russia-supplied nuclear capacity; the laurels of a global power-broker for defusing the Iranian nuclear crisis; and the praise of his increasingly nostalgic citizens for restoring the lost empire's glory.

Instead, he looks hapless before the specter of a nuclear-armed militant clerical regime that looms beneath the veil of a peaceful nuclear energy project. Putin's massive supplies of conventional weapons to Iran, including air defense missiles and armor, have strengthened that specter — much to Russia's own peril.

For months, Russia and China have been stalling the West's efforts to refer Iran's nuclear program to the UN Security Council. Last week, Russia finally backed an IAEA resolution to do so, only upon the condition that the Council doesn't take up the issue until March. Meanwhile, pundits believe, Putin had hoped to defuse the crisis by persuading Iran to shift its uranium-enrichment to Russia, which would deny it the ability to use such facilities on its own soil to produce weapons-grade material.

From his own experience, Putin should have known better: Back in 2000, the Russian president had told a G-8 summit in Japan that he had convinced North Korean leader Kim Jong Il to abandon his missile program. Sounded good, until Kim explained he was joking. This time, Putin seems to be the butt of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's practical joke.

Putin's policies were best summed up last Saturday by Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri commenting on Putin's pledge last week to invite the radical Palestinian group to Moscow: "It will represent a division in the Western position led by the U.S."

"A division in the Western position" helped fuel Saddam Hussein's defiance over the years, finally leading to war. In the long run, Putin's policies will do Hamas or Iran no better than they did Saddam, but they do risk badly hurting Russia.

The regime seems incapable of having long-term strategies. And its short term tactics are driven by cash, whether it be in jailing the oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky and taking over his billions, or endorsing Iran's nuclear ambitions. Russia's projected income from just supplying seven nuclear reactors to Iran runs into $10 billion — and way more for maintenance, fueling, etc.

From 1990 through 1996, Russia supplied over $5 billion worth arms to Iran. Then, Russia heeded a U.S. request to stop military supplies, but resumed them in 2000, just as Putin became president. Last October, Moscow and Tehran signed a deal on military supplies worth $300 million annually. Russia will also supply $700 million worth of surface-to-air missiles. The Iranian arms market now promises Russia some $10 billion over next several years.

These tantalizing riches risk falling into the same chasm, however, as the unpaid billions owed to Russia by Saddam Hussein's regime, and other Moscow-backed rogue regimes. Russia risks ending up unpaid, friendless — and facing a volatile nuclear neighbor, connected to terrorist groups and armed with Russian weapons, right on her unstable southern border. Some return to glory, indeed.

Up to 10,000 may die if George Bush attacks Iran

I think there is at least a 50:50 risk of some sort of real crisis, probably with military action, in Iran before the end of next year.

A major US attack on Iran’s nuclear sites would kill up to 10,000 people and would lead to war in the Middle East.

There is always the possibility that the Israelis do it. I don’t think you can rule that out. For the Israelis, having an Iran which is getting anywhere close to a nuclear weapons capability is simply not acceptable.

Any bombing of Iran by US forces, or by their Israeli allies, would have to be part of a surprise attack on a range of facilities including urban areas that would catch many Iranians unprotected.

Precision bombing could put Iran’s weapons programme back five to ten years. But within a month the situation would become an extremely dangerous conflict.

Britain could be drawn into the conflict if the prime minister allowed B2 bombers, which can carry 40,000 pounds of precision bombs, to use bases at Fairford, Gloucester, and on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia.

A US military attack on Iranian nuclear infrastructure would be the start of a protracted military confrontation.

It could eventually lead to a lengthy confrontation involving many other countries in the region, could mean the closure of the Gulf.

And it would probably have a formidable impact on oil prices, as well as spurring new attacks by radicals on Western interests.

Such a confrontation would probably involve Iraq, Israel and Lebanon, as well as the US and Iran. There is a distinct possibility of the Arab Gulf states getting involved as well.

Military deaths in the first wave of attacks against Iran would be expected to be in the thousands.

Civilian deaths would be in the many hundreds at least. If the war evolved into a wider conflict, primarily to pre-empt or counter Iranian responses, the casualties would eventually be much higher.

It is worth noting that an attack by the US or Israel on Iran would probably spur Tehran to work as rapidly as possible toward developing a nuclear military option.

A ground offensive in Iran would not be feasible, as it would require at least 100,000 troops – and US forces are already overstretched with 130,000 soldiers in Iraq and 18,000 in Afghanistan.

In reality any attack would have a powerful unifying effect within Iran, bolster the Iranian government, and mean any future US relationship with Iran would be based on violence.

Simply put, a military response to the current crisis is a particularly dangerous option and should not be considered further. Alternative approaches must be sought, however difficult these may be.

Paul Rogers is professor of peace studies of the University of Bradford. To read his study of the threat to Iran go to www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk

Iran started enrich uran on it's plants.

The things that are really at stake in the Iranian crisis

The conflict among the big powers on the Iranian issue continues. Since December 2002, the United States has accused Iran of trying to acquire the atomic bomb, which would violate the Treaty of Non Proliferation (TNP). Thus, the United States is trying to have the UN Security Council condemn Iran as a pretext to attack the Islamic Republic [1].

If Washington succeeds in controlling Iran, it would also have the military control of the eastern coast of the Gulf and the southern coast of the Caspian Sea, its oil and gas reserves, both regarded as the second largest in the world [2].

The United States already has the military control of part of the Caspian basin and the corridor that allows for communication between that area and the Indian Ocean (Afghanistan and Pakistan). Most of the Gulf (Saudi Arabia and Iraq) is also under the US's military control. Thus, at the end of this operation, Washington would own the most important current hydrocarbon exploitation areas and the main reserves still to be exploited. The world economy would then be in the hands of the United States, which would have absolute power.

In the current stage of the conflict, the powers are divided as to the US's accusations. The United Kingdom, France and Germany are convinced of the military nature of the Iranian nuclear project. They base their opinion on reports from US intelligence services, which affirm, in official documents, that Tehran is carrying out a Green Salt Projectto develop and to launch nuclear warheads. On the contrary, Russia, China and India believe that Iran's nuclear program has peaceful purposes [3]. They base their opinion on a ruling by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Hoseini Jamenei condemning the production, possession and use of the atomic bomb as contrary to the Islamic ethics.

Objectively, the difference established by the Treaty of Non Proliferation (TNP) between authorized civil nuclear technology and forbidden military nuclear technology is no longer suitable under the current conditions. The know-how and civil facilities can be easily and quickly adapted to military purposes. The strict interpretation of the TNP would imply the prohibition, for all states, of the development of a civil nuclear industry while, a liberal interpretation would open the doors to a generalized proliferation. As this issue has not been solved, it is impossible to solve it in the Iranian case. This lack of definition is the factor that the United States hopes to use to launch a war. [4].

However, there is a way to clear things up. A specific method of uranium enrichment, previously known in a partial way, apparently can serve to establish a difference between military and peaceful use .Russia developed this method and thus intends to let Iran - and the international community - use it. This seems to be one of the threemain proposals that President Putin will take to the G8 summit, a meeting that he himself will preside over this summer in Saint Petersburg.

It will be necessary to prove the feasibility of this project. Russia would then produce the nuclear fuel, in its own territory, in factories jointly built with the beneficiary states and under the control of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). It would also be necessary to create detailed protocols to guarantee the interests of all parties. The implementation of this project would represent a radical change in international relations. The energy security that Russia would give to the world would eclipse the authority of the United States, a country that currently satisfies its own energy security needs to the detriment of the rest of the world.

Iran has turned its project of civil nuclear development a symbol of its independence in front of the Anglo-Saxon colonialism that has brought so much suffering to its people [5]. Contrary to an idea widely spread by the Atlantist media, this project does not belong only to a Iranian power elite but it is an element of consensus of the entire Iranian society. In addition, the Islamic Republic abandoned its dream of expanding the Jomeinist revolution and today aims at becoming the driving force of the Movement of Non Aligned Countries, which is currently in a revitalization stage. Iran wants to share its current demand with others and to succeed in exercising their right to develop a civil nuclear industry, not only for its own people but also for all the others.

Thus, far from being exclusively linked to Iran's future, the current political game has to do with international balance and the US ambitions, confirmed during President Bush's most recent speech on the State of the Union, to control the world.

In 2004 and 2005, the different actors of this game carried out several maneuvers. A European troika (France, United Kingdom and Germany) supposedly played a mediating role between Washington and Tehran; they asked the Iranians to freeze the situation and ended up leaning to the US side. After having accepted a two-and-a-half-year moratorium for research work, Iran resumed it on January 10, 2006,saying that it had waited enough as to show its good will while the Europeans had not made any serious offers. In the meantime, the Russian position was sort of undecipherable as the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs suggested that they could side with their western counterparts before he was publicly put in his place by Presiden Putin who expressed his interest in reaching a peaceful solution. Finally, during the last weeks, many trips allowed Iranian, Chinese and Russian diplomats to design a common strategy.

The issue had a sudden evolution after the United Kingdom organized on January 30th, 2006, a "private ministerial meeting" where the British, French, German, Russian, American and Chinese foreign ministers held a meeting. During the gathering, Britain's Jack Straw suggested that the IAEA should present the issue before the UN Security Council, the first stage of the process towards war. His Chinese and Russian counterparts noted that, in the current situation, a decision of this type would not have any judicial foundation.

Due to their confidence in the feasibility of its own uranium enrichment project, the Russian Federation only wanted to "let time pass by" in order to prepare a protocol with Iran, which would only take one or two months according to experts. The guests ended the dinner setting an agenda that both parties see as a victory: next week. The IAEA Board of Governors will not transfer the Iranian file to the Security Council as it does not have the authority to do it butit will give it a report asking for the adoption of measures thatstrengthen its own authority to be able to do it in the future.

This commitment allows the Europeans and the Americans to keep the pressure while the Russians and the Chinese can make use of time. Saying who won that evening would be like determining if a glass is half empty or half full when water is in the middle.

In practice, supposing that the Security Council gives that prerogative to the IAEA Board of Governors, the latter could not exercise this prerogative until its next meeting, on March 9th.

The Iranians pretended to interpret the shady deal as if the Russians had abandoned them. However, it is possible that they obtained a written commitment from the Russian Federation that it will use its veto at the Security Council in the event that a resolution to authorize war is presented.

Anyway, the Iranians immediately resorted to their colleagues of the Movement of Non-Aligned Countries. President Mahmud Amadineyad spoke over the phone with his South African counterpart, Thabo Mbeki, who gave him his support (although the apartheid regime produced the atomic bomb along with Israel, South Africa later renounced to it).For its part, Indonesia issued several pacifying statements while Venezuela and Malaysia will soon welcome the Iranian president.

Simultaneously, Iran is preparing "a world without Israel and the United States." Tehran hopes to create an oil stock market that will not accept the dollar. It is already working on an experimental basis.

Although no country has officially announced its participation, many will encourage the participation of firms that will serve as intermediaries. As the dollar is very overvalued because it is the exchange currency in oil transactions, [6] a stock market of this kind, even if it covered only 10% of the oil market, would cause a collapse of the dollar compared only to that of 1939. The US power would then be dragged by the devaluation and Israel itself would be doomed to bankruptcy.

Thus, Washington has no other choice than using all its influence over the international economic actors to break up with Tehran. In the absence of a war, the United States at least has to isolate Iran in the economic aspect.

Paradoxically, none of these options seems realistic. Reasonably, the US Air Force and the Israeli army can not attack the Iranian nuclear facilities as there are Russian advisors and technicians there. To attack Iran would also mean to declare war on Russia. In addition, such an attack would be followed by an Iranian response that would use the devastating Thor M-1 missiles – acquired in Russia – against Israel, not to mention that the Shiites of Iraq would make life even more difficult for the occupation forces. In the event that the United States tries to use an economic blockade, Iran could easily get around it through its agreement of privileged partner with China. However, it would deprive the "West" of part of its oil supply, thus causing a300% increase in the price of the barrel of oil and a deep economic crisis.

In sum, the result of this game depends on the ability of each participant to adapt its own calendar to the others' while the Bush administration insists on dragging them into a conflict although it does not have the necessary resources and it takes the risk of losing its authority.

ATTACKING IRAN WILL PUT THE US AT RISK AS NEVER BEFORE

Word that Iran has plans to retaliate abroad with secret commando units should give pause to the neo-con hotheads in the Bush administration who are slavering for war against the Middle East's most formidable military power.

The fantasy prevailing in the White House and the Pentagon (and among some pandering Democrats in Congress) is that the U.S. can cripple Iran's nascent nuclear weapons development program by aerial bombardment of its enrichment facilities and scientific centers, and that this can be done at little cost or risk to the U.S.

In fact, the doctrine of legitimate response to attack gives Iran a wide range of responses to any attack, which should make Americans very leery about playing such games.

If the U.S. were to bomb an Iranian nuclear power facility, Iran would have the legal right to do the same to vulnerable American nuclear facilities. And while the U.S. might do its attacking with B-52 bombers, stealth aircraft or missiles, Iran could accomplish the same thing with trained commando units. Furthermore, under the international laws of war, if the commandos wore uniforms during their assault on U.S. facilities, they would have to be considered legitimate soldiers fighting for their country. The president would not be able to simply call them enemy combatants and order their fingernails ripped out.

Nor would he be able to accuse them of war crimes for spewing nuclear fallout across vast stretches of the United States, if our own attack on Iranian nuclear facilities did the same thing there.

Well, let me correct that. This president has made it abundantly clear that he doesn't give a rat’s ass about international law, so he could declare captured Iranian commandos terrorists, deny them POW status, and start the torture he is so fond of, but he'd only make more enemies by so blatantly flaunting international law.

Meanwhile, Iran would not be limited to attacking U.S. nuclear facilities. If the U.S. were to attack Iranian territory, it would be as much an act of war as was the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and it would enable Iran to respond in kind against any legitimate U.S. target, which could include U.S. shipping (including the targeting of oil tankers in the Persian Gulf bound for the U.S. or for U.S. allies), port facilities, transport centers like airports and rail stations, factories, oil storage facilities, chemical plants, etc. Civilian casualties? Well, as the Pentagon is wont to say, those are just unfortunate side effects—collateral damage, you might say. Iran could also turn the U.S. occupation force in Iraq into sitting ducks for attack by its allies, the Shiites in Iraq, whose forces already demonstrated their courage and capabilities in an earlier uprising against U.S. forces early in the occupation. This time, they'd have overt Iranian assistance and weapons.

During the days leading up to the Iraq war, the same warning was made about Iraq, but clearly, the Iraqi government, hobbled by years of sanctions, and massively unpopular at home, was in no position to mount such a counterstrike campaign against the U.S. The whole White House story about Iraq’s posing a threat to America was a big lie. But Iran is another story. Not only does it have a battle-tested army of some 800,000 people, and plenty of arms and money, thanks to its being the second largest oil exporter in the world. It also has a democratically elected government that--whether we like it or not-- has the support of a large segment of the population.

Add to that the fact of Iranian nationalism. Where Iraq is basically a hodgepodge of tribes and ethnicities cobbled together by British colonial rulers and then held together by the use of state terror and brute force, Iran is an ancient civilization and culture with an intense sense of national pride and identity. Attack Iran, and the U.S. will instantly galvanize most Iranians--even those who may despise the current theocratic leadership--into blood enemies of America.

That is the kind of enemy that can successfully mount covert campaigns against this country.

Surely no one wants to see yet another country in an unstable region acquiring nuclear weapons, but the solution is not the Bush default of war, which Iraq and Afghanistan have shown us tends to follow the law of unintended consequences.

This is an administration of chickenhawk policymakers and leaders who have never met a war they didn’t weasel their way out of, and who seem to be trying to compensate for their youthful cowardice and lack of patriotism by displays of wanton violance and aggression. If they aren't stopped, they could well be responsible for losing a few more American cities by the time Bush's second term mercifully ends.

Neocons Weigh In on Iran's A-Bomb Robert Dreyfuss

Robert Joseph and Richard Perle weighed in this week on the idea of attacking Iran. While many other neocon and right-wing commentators have done the same, Joseph and Perle are important because the former is a senior U.S. government official and the latter is considered the chief spokesman for the neoconservative faction outside the government.

Joesph, the undersecretary of state for arms control (the post previously held by John Bolton), spoke this week at the Foreign Press Center in Washington. In his remarks, he contradicted many others who say that Iran is far from the ability to develop nuclear weapons:

"I would say that Iran does have the capability to develop nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them," he said in a response to a question.
With the Europeans having declared two years of negotiations with Iran at a dead-end, Joseph said "there is no end of diplomacy" and that taking Iran to the Security Council was "moving diplomacy to the next level."
"We are giving every chance to diplomacy to work," Joseph said.

At the same time, the official said, "No options are off the table. We cannot tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran."

Perle, meanwhile, said that the fact that the Bush administration was wrong about WMD in Iraq doesn't mean that the United States ought to hesitate before accusing Iran of building a bomb. In fact, he said, turning logic on its head and giving it a spin, the very uncertainty means that the United States ought to be even more interested in attacking Iran. The less we know about whether Iran is building a bomb, the more eager we ought to be to bomb them:

"If you want to try to wait until the very last minute, you'd better be very confident of your intelligence because if you're not, you won't know when the last minute is," Perle told Reuters on the sidelines of an annual security conference in Munich.
"And so, ironically, one of the lessons of the inadequate intelligence of Iraq is you'd better be careful how long you choose to wait."

Russian Ultranationalist Leader Expects U.S. to Attack Iran in Late March.

A senior Russian parliamentary official and leader of the ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Vladimir Zhirinovsky believes that a U.S. attack on Iran is inevitable, he has told Ekho Moskvy radio station.

“The war is inevitable because the Americans want this war,” he said. “Any country claiming a leading position in the world will need to wage wars. Otherwise it will simply not be able to retain its leading position. The date for the strike is already known — it is the election day in Israel (March 28). It is also known how much that war will cost,” Zhirinovsky said.

He went on to add that the publication of Prophet Muhammad cartoons in the European press was a planned action by the U.S. whose aim is “to provoke a row between Europe and the Islamic world”. “It will all end with European countries thanking the United States and paying, and giving soldiers,” he said. Russia should “choose a position of non-interference and express minimal solidarity with the Islamic world”, Zhirinovsky added.

For his part, the head of the Centre for Strategic Studies of Religions and Modern World Politics, Maxim Shevchenko, also believes that a U.S. attack on Iran is very likely although he sees no preconditions for this war. “Iran does not threaten anyone, is not pointing its missiles at anyone. No Iranian leader has ever threatened to carry out a strike against the U.S. Therefore preparations for a war against Iran appear to be a global act of provocation,” he said.

In Shevchenko’s opinion, the reason behind “this barefaced promotion of a world war lies not in a conflict between the West and the Islamic World but in a fight for power in the world between US and European elites”. “The fate of humanity will be decided between a saber-rattling America and an allegedly democratic Europe,” Shevchenko concluded.

Whereas a senior research associate of the World Economy and International Relations Institute, Georgy Mirsky, is confident that “there will be no war”.

“The Americans got so very much stuck in Afghanistan and Iraq that they will not start a new war without definite proof of the fact that Iran poses a threat to the world. Besides, the U.S. has mid-term elections this year and the Republicans, who have suffered a severe blow to their trust, will not be able to win these elections if they drag the country into a new hazardous escapade.

”As for Israel, it can carry out a strike against Iran but only when it knows for certain that only one step remains before an Iranian atomic bomb is created. But that time has not come yet,“ Mirsky said.

Calculating the Risk of War in Iran.
In the past weeks media reports have speculated that Washington is 'thinking the unthinkable,’ namely, an aggressive, pre-emptive nuclear bombardment of Iran, by either the United States or Israel, to destroy or render useless the deep underground Iranian nuclear facilities.

The possibility of war against Iran presents a geo-strategic and geopolitical problem of far more complexity than the bombing and occupation of Iraq. And Iraq has proven complicated enough for the United States. Below we try to identify some of the main motives of the main actors in the new drama and the outlook for possible war.

The dramatis personae include the Bush Administration, most especially the Cheney-led neo-conservative hawks in control now of not only the Pentagon, but also the CIA, the UN Ambassadorship and a growing part of the State Department planning bureaucracy under Condi Rice. It includes Iran, under the new and outspoken President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It includes Putin’s Russia, a nuclear-armed veto member of the UN Security Council. It includes a nuclear-armed Israel, whose acting Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, recently declared that Israel could 'under no circumstances’ allow Iranian development of nuclear weapons 'that can threaten our existence.’ It includes the EU, especially Security Council Permanent Member, France and the weakening President Chirac. It includes China, whose dependence on Iranian oil and potentially natural gas is large.

Each of these actors has differing agendas and different goals, making the issue of Iran one of the most complex in recent international politics. What’s going on here? Is a nuclear war, with all that implies for the global financial and political stability, imminent? What are the possible and even probable outcomes?